


Sometimes You Hear the Bullet

by commas_and_ampersands



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Gun Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 01:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16755250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commas_and_ampersands/pseuds/commas_and_ampersands
Summary: There’s an old saying among soldiers: you never hear the bullet that kills you. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but Minako hears the bullet that catches Rei in the chest.





	Sometimes You Hear the Bullet

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the M*A*S*H episode by the same name.

There’s an old saying among soldiers: you never hear the bullet that kills you.

Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but Minako hears the bullet that catches Rei in the chest.

It’s wrong that her immediate thought (one of her immediate thoughts - her mind has never been quiet, she never loses her train of thought, she just jumps tracks) is so far from the immediate.  There are plenty of other thoughts that scatter across her mind, beyond the raging grief that swells in her gut, the bloom of red against Rei’s uniform as she falls.  But she tastes copper in the air, feels something hot and acrid spray across her face, and at least part of her is amazed that she remembered that correctly, even if she can’t remember where she first heard it.

But she heard it somewhere.  Just like she heard the gunshot, just like she heard metal punch through flesh and bone, just like she heard the kill order, just like she heard the senator - her father,  _Rei’s father_  - promise to rid Tokyo of the sailor-suited menace that’s brought so much trouble to its citizens.  She heard a man kill his own daughter for political gain.

She hears her own voice, a raw shriek wrenched from her throat.  She hears Rei’s body when she hits the ground.

She heard the bullet, and as she’s racing towards her best friend, her partner, her sometimes lover, and her heart, she thinks maybe she’ll be hearing it the rest of her life.

“No, Rei.  Rei, no.  Rei, baby, please.  Stay with me, love.  Come on, don’t do this to me, don’t leave me, Rei, please,  _please_ , don’t leave me.”

She’s babbling and clutching and trying to will Rei’s blood back into her body with her own two hands.  Red bubbles at the corner of her mouth; her eyes are going glassy.

They have so little time.

“Please, just hold on,” Minako pleads.  She’s never begged for anything before, not from Rei or anyone else, but for this, for Rei’s life, she’ll crawl across hot glass and into hell itself.  “Ami will be here soon.  Ami will help.  Makoto and Haruka will keep them off us, just please wait for the others.  Ami will help, or Usagi, or someone, but I can’t– Rei, I can’t– Rei, please–”

Rei coughs.  Red spills down her chin.  “…’nako.”

“I’m here.  I’m here, Rei.  Stay here.  Stay with me.”

“…can’t see you.  Can’t see….”

Minako holds Rei’s face between her palms and pushes their foreheads together.  “I’m right here.  I’m right here.  I won’t leave you, so don’t you dare leave me.”

“…need… favor…”

“Whatever you want, hear me?  I will do literally whatever you want, but you have to stay here.”

Rei grips the back of her neck, and then she smiles, pink and feral and final.  “My father….  Make.  Him.  Pay.”

Minako listens to the fight over the rattle in Rei’s lungs, to Makoto and Haruka forming a two-woman blockade, to distant, tinny shouts over communicators as the others fight to get closer, and to the bullets.  Minako thinks she can hear every single shot.  Or maybe it’s the same one, over and over.

Then she hears Rei’s last breath, and maybe that’s the loudest thing of all.


End file.
